Matthew's Journal

What about it? When I saw the question, I seemed to remember that "Na" came from a word, the latter half of which had an etymological connection to sodium, and I was all set to say that was really clever. (And, by the guidelines I outlined, would be ok, since you have to know the words at both stages to make the connection, as there's no overlap between the two halves except in the word you don't say. Although I stress again, that those are suggested guidelines, not fixed rules.)

But now, it looks like according to the internet, my memory was completely wrong, so why ask about sodium? It seems to fall into my category of "using a different chemical name for the same chemical (either giving the formula or another standard name with no etymological overlap)", which was ok.